Post by WBBDaily on Feb 16, 2023 9:55:30 GMT -5
theathletic.com/4163745/2023/02/16/overseas-wnba-sue-bird-natalia-hejkova/
PRAGUE, Czech Republic — For seven minutes during an evening practice on the first day of January, Natália Hejková, the head coach of ZVVZ USK Praha, instructed her team to play five-on-five against each other. The ball she tossed out to them, though, was miniature and foam. It was covered in green and black panels and was not to be shot overhand into a basket. Standing on their home court, she told them to play soccer.
Hejková, wearing gray sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, watched from the sideline as her players — who, remind you, play basketball professionally — tried to string together passes using their feet. In lieu of a net, each basket stanchion’s padding was the goal. Connecticut Sun All-Star center Brionna Jones, who has been with Praha for four years in the WNBA offseasons, struggled compared to some of her teammates. Guard Teja Oblak, whose brother, Jan, is the starting goalkeeper for Atlético Madrid, and guard María Conde, who grew up playing the sport in Spain before turning full-time to the hardwood, excelled.
Playing soccer at basketball practice may seem unorthodox, but Hejková’s methods are proven. She has been coaching for 35 years, the last 10 in Prague. She has won five EuroLeague Women titles, the most of any coach in the last three decades. And she’s worked with the sport’s biggest stars: Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Tina Thompson and Lauren Jackson, to name a few. In 2019, as a result of her success and impact, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
Pokey Chatman, a former WNBA head coach and a current assistant with the Seattle Storm, worked under Hejková at Spartak Moscow, a pro team in Russia. Chatman remembers Hejková often telling her fellow coaches that sometimes, “I just want them in the gym together, thinking about something else.” Hence the recent game of soccer for a Praha roster which dealt with a rash of injuries during the season’s first half. The players got their cardio in but laughed at their own miscues. “She’s always getting to know the players, and how we work, and how our minds work,” Conde says. “I think that’s the best thing that she does. That she’s able to bring everyone together.”
At times, Hejková, 68, implores nontraditional tactics — like turning to futsal in the middle of a basketball practice — to do so. The brief foray into The Beautiful Game marked the first time Hejková wove the sport into a practice this season. (Sun star forward Alyssa Thomas, who is in her fifth season in Prague, says the club has played occasional indoor soccer in the past.) No matter the team, or player she is coaching, Hejková tries to instill a sense of trust. Relationships are paramount.
Hejková is known for keeping a calm demeanor on the sideline. Jones describes her as “very chill.” But while she might be understated, her resumé is also robust. It’s why Chatman says, “I would always call her the Pat Summitt of Europe.”
Growing up in Žilina, Slovakia, an industrial city close to the Czech and Polish borders that housed a chemical factory, a carpet factory and a paper mill, Hejková had no intentions of becoming a coach. Her father, Vsevolod, was a civil engineer. Her mother, María, was a school teacher, instructing students ages 6 to 11. As a child, Hejková sampled numerous activities, from gymnastics and swimming, to track and field and ballet. She played basketball, too, eventually gravitating toward the sport she calls “the best team game.”
“For us, in Europe,” she says, “it was not usual that (a) woman was head coach.”
Hejková chuckles as she describes how she initially got into the profession. She played basketball in college — she attended Charles University in Prague — while studying to become a lawyer. After graduation, she continued playing the sport. She thought, however, her future would entail a career in the judiciary, and not on the hardwood.
In the early 1980s, Hejková joined SCP Ružomberok, a team located in a small town in northern Slovakia, to close out her on-court career. While there, she worked a second job at the city’s paper mill. Eventually, too, she started coaching one of the club’s youth teams. It was, she says, “a hobby only.” It’s why she presently describes her decades in coaching as “like an accident.”
Ružomberok was in the second division when a 33-year-old Hejková slid into its lead chair. Initially, she says, “They didn’t know (how) to play.” But she believed if she could improve her roster’s physical conditioning, and push the pace in games, Ružomberok’s chances of success would improve. Since then, she’s sought for her teams to be aggressive on defense and in transition. She also learned other lessons she has held onto.
Hejková, for instance, remembers a conversation with her mother from early in her tenure with Ružomberok, in which María told her, “Don’t scream (at) them. They feel nervous. You have to support them.”
“And I started to think, she is right,” Hejková says. “Don’t try to comment on everything they are doing. You have to be one of them and give them a hand.’”
That’s why she says she’s highly selective about when she issues criticism. She additionally tries to be intentional about how she delivers it. “I feel if I scream all the game, they don’t care,” she says. “But if they hear (me occasionally), they go, ‘Oh, something is wrong.’ … Some mistakes have to happen during the game. Players don’t want to make mistakes. If I scream, I push her down.”
Natália Hejková coaches WNBA players Alyssa Thomas (shown here) and Brionna Jones for ZVVZ USK Praha. (Michal Kamaryt / CTK via AP Images)
Chatman says Hejková instills a “quiet trust” in those around her. “Especially abroad where things can be a little bit dicey in terms of a coach fired yesterday and today,” Chatman adds, “Nata represents a calm, a comfort.” Key to that is trying to understand her players and staff on a personal level.
For years with Thomas, Hejková pushed her star American forward to explore Prague and learn more about the city’s castles. Danielle Robinson, who played for Praha from 2013–16, remembers Hejková giving out restaurant recommendations and telling them about the city’s history. Chatman, whom Hejková later hired to coach the Slovakian national team, recalls the coach talking about tea, and discussing her passion for finding wild mushrooms that could be dried out and used in soups or sauces. Hejková is also a student of languages: She speaks four — Czech, Slovak, Russian and English — and says she understands three more — Spanish, Hungarian and Polish. Her desire to understand one’s native tongue is another way she has tried to relate.
Bird and Taurasi both played for Hejková on Spartak Moscow. While there, Chatman remembers the UConn duo always trying to teach the team’s head coach new words. On one occasion, Chatman recalls Hejková walking up to her and asking, “Pokey, what is a dingleberry?”
“I said, ‘What?’” Chatman recalls. “But that was their way to say they really liked Nata.”
By the time Hejková paced the sidelines for Spartak, she had already established herself as one of the sport’s top coaches. She spent more than 15 years with Ružomberok, overseeing the club’s rise from the anonymity of Slovakia’s second division to EuroLeague champions, winning the multinational title in 1999 and 2000. With the Russian club, however, she faced a different challenge: trying to ensure her uber-talented team didn’t fail.
Spartak was owned by Shabtai Kalmanovich, a businessman, concert promoter and former KGB spy, who had spent more than half a decade in an Israeli jail on an espionage charge. ESPN once compared Kalmanovich to “sort of the Mark Cuban of Russian basketball.” He spared no expense — both on and off the court, including once booking the club for a two-day stay at the Ritz-Carlton Paris ahead of the EuroLeague Final Four, which was being played in Spain — to ensure his club would be the world’s best.
With Spartak, Hejková coached Taurasi, Bird, Jackson, Thompson and Ticha Penicheiro, among other notables. Chatman, who later also became the club’s head coach, said that while there, “I thought I had died and gone to basketball heaven” because of its surplus of talent. Chatman didn’t know Hejková before joining her staff. She had the same agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, as Taurasi and Bird, however. And Hejková believes one of her American players told Kalmanovich about the American coach. “Usually, he told (me) something and I had to accept,” she says.
Hejková says Chatman taught her about the style of basketball in the U.S. Among the hardest aspects Hejková says she faced was telling some of her foreign players they couldn’t always suit up due to international gameplay rules.
Nevertheless, the Slovakian coach says she gave her star-studded roster “freedom, because they are special.” Adding: “I didn’t want to show power that I am (the) coach and you have to be kids, because they were so great.” She says she installed rules on defense but gave them flexibility on offense. In both of Hejková’s seasons with Spartak, they took home EuroLeague titles.
Giving her players agency remained a priority after she joined Praha in 2012. Robinson, who starred on the team’s 2015 EuroLeague title run, recalls Hejková building a foundation, but also telling her, “Go be free.” “I think she kind of just let me be,” she says. While there, the 33-year-old guard adds she was also “probably in the best shape of my life” because of all the running they did. A commitment to pushing the basketball remains today.
In a highly anticipated early December EuroLeague road game against Fenerbahçe — only two points currently separate the two teams at the top of Group A — Hejková rarely became demonstrative even as her team squandered a fourth-quarter lead. In a recent practice, she was slightly more animated, repeating, “Please be more aggressive on the ball” on numerous occasions as the club worked on its 3-2 zone. But she seldom is one to deliver a weighty speech, especially ahead of Czech competition where the club recently won its record 257th consecutive domestic league contest. Instead, she says about hyping up her team, “I don’t need motivation because I have players and they love to win.”
Thomas was the first of Praha’s two current Americans to sign with the club. With her in the lineup, Hejková says peers have told her team is playing faster than ever. Jones arrived a year after her Connecticut teammate. Immediately, Jones says, she was given the green light to shoot 3s, and to maneuver around the floor as she saw fit.
When Jones arrived in Prague in 2019, she says she knew some of Hejková’s reputation, learning what she could from conversations with Thomas. She admits, however, she didn’t know the full extent of her coach’s accolades — among them winning national titles in four different countries. During her first season there, Hejková received an acknowledgement that would surpass any other: She was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
The Slovakian coach says she had “not even a small small thought” she would one day receive such a message. When she was told, over the phone, that she had been inducted, “I stopped to talk. I forget (how) to speak English.”
Months later, at the global basketball federation’s ceremony in Beijing, Hejková, who says Praha will be the last organization for whom she coaches, arrived not thinking she would have to give an acceptance speech. On stage, however, she fittingly tried to remain calm. She strung together just under 90 seconds of thank-yous. She praised the “many perfect people, many perfect managers, many good assistant coaches and great players” across her three-decade career. Her final acknowledgement was a nod toward one of the biggest influences.
“I don’t want to forget my family and my biggest biggest fan: Mom,” she said. Hejková then looked up and blew a kiss to the sky.
Hejková, wearing gray sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, watched from the sideline as her players — who, remind you, play basketball professionally — tried to string together passes using their feet. In lieu of a net, each basket stanchion’s padding was the goal. Connecticut Sun All-Star center Brionna Jones, who has been with Praha for four years in the WNBA offseasons, struggled compared to some of her teammates. Guard Teja Oblak, whose brother, Jan, is the starting goalkeeper for Atlético Madrid, and guard María Conde, who grew up playing the sport in Spain before turning full-time to the hardwood, excelled.
Playing soccer at basketball practice may seem unorthodox, but Hejková’s methods are proven. She has been coaching for 35 years, the last 10 in Prague. She has won five EuroLeague Women titles, the most of any coach in the last three decades. And she’s worked with the sport’s biggest stars: Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Tina Thompson and Lauren Jackson, to name a few. In 2019, as a result of her success and impact, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
Pokey Chatman, a former WNBA head coach and a current assistant with the Seattle Storm, worked under Hejková at Spartak Moscow, a pro team in Russia. Chatman remembers Hejková often telling her fellow coaches that sometimes, “I just want them in the gym together, thinking about something else.” Hence the recent game of soccer for a Praha roster which dealt with a rash of injuries during the season’s first half. The players got their cardio in but laughed at their own miscues. “She’s always getting to know the players, and how we work, and how our minds work,” Conde says. “I think that’s the best thing that she does. That she’s able to bring everyone together.”
At times, Hejková, 68, implores nontraditional tactics — like turning to futsal in the middle of a basketball practice — to do so. The brief foray into The Beautiful Game marked the first time Hejková wove the sport into a practice this season. (Sun star forward Alyssa Thomas, who is in her fifth season in Prague, says the club has played occasional indoor soccer in the past.) No matter the team, or player she is coaching, Hejková tries to instill a sense of trust. Relationships are paramount.
Hejková is known for keeping a calm demeanor on the sideline. Jones describes her as “very chill.” But while she might be understated, her resumé is also robust. It’s why Chatman says, “I would always call her the Pat Summitt of Europe.”
Growing up in Žilina, Slovakia, an industrial city close to the Czech and Polish borders that housed a chemical factory, a carpet factory and a paper mill, Hejková had no intentions of becoming a coach. Her father, Vsevolod, was a civil engineer. Her mother, María, was a school teacher, instructing students ages 6 to 11. As a child, Hejková sampled numerous activities, from gymnastics and swimming, to track and field and ballet. She played basketball, too, eventually gravitating toward the sport she calls “the best team game.”
“For us, in Europe,” she says, “it was not usual that (a) woman was head coach.”
Hejková chuckles as she describes how she initially got into the profession. She played basketball in college — she attended Charles University in Prague — while studying to become a lawyer. After graduation, she continued playing the sport. She thought, however, her future would entail a career in the judiciary, and not on the hardwood.
In the early 1980s, Hejková joined SCP Ružomberok, a team located in a small town in northern Slovakia, to close out her on-court career. While there, she worked a second job at the city’s paper mill. Eventually, too, she started coaching one of the club’s youth teams. It was, she says, “a hobby only.” It’s why she presently describes her decades in coaching as “like an accident.”
Ružomberok was in the second division when a 33-year-old Hejková slid into its lead chair. Initially, she says, “They didn’t know (how) to play.” But she believed if she could improve her roster’s physical conditioning, and push the pace in games, Ružomberok’s chances of success would improve. Since then, she’s sought for her teams to be aggressive on defense and in transition. She also learned other lessons she has held onto.
Hejková, for instance, remembers a conversation with her mother from early in her tenure with Ružomberok, in which María told her, “Don’t scream (at) them. They feel nervous. You have to support them.”
“And I started to think, she is right,” Hejková says. “Don’t try to comment on everything they are doing. You have to be one of them and give them a hand.’”
That’s why she says she’s highly selective about when she issues criticism. She additionally tries to be intentional about how she delivers it. “I feel if I scream all the game, they don’t care,” she says. “But if they hear (me occasionally), they go, ‘Oh, something is wrong.’ … Some mistakes have to happen during the game. Players don’t want to make mistakes. If I scream, I push her down.”
Natália Hejková coaches WNBA players Alyssa Thomas (shown here) and Brionna Jones for ZVVZ USK Praha. (Michal Kamaryt / CTK via AP Images)
Chatman says Hejková instills a “quiet trust” in those around her. “Especially abroad where things can be a little bit dicey in terms of a coach fired yesterday and today,” Chatman adds, “Nata represents a calm, a comfort.” Key to that is trying to understand her players and staff on a personal level.
For years with Thomas, Hejková pushed her star American forward to explore Prague and learn more about the city’s castles. Danielle Robinson, who played for Praha from 2013–16, remembers Hejková giving out restaurant recommendations and telling them about the city’s history. Chatman, whom Hejková later hired to coach the Slovakian national team, recalls the coach talking about tea, and discussing her passion for finding wild mushrooms that could be dried out and used in soups or sauces. Hejková is also a student of languages: She speaks four — Czech, Slovak, Russian and English — and says she understands three more — Spanish, Hungarian and Polish. Her desire to understand one’s native tongue is another way she has tried to relate.
Bird and Taurasi both played for Hejková on Spartak Moscow. While there, Chatman remembers the UConn duo always trying to teach the team’s head coach new words. On one occasion, Chatman recalls Hejková walking up to her and asking, “Pokey, what is a dingleberry?”
“I said, ‘What?’” Chatman recalls. “But that was their way to say they really liked Nata.”
By the time Hejková paced the sidelines for Spartak, she had already established herself as one of the sport’s top coaches. She spent more than 15 years with Ružomberok, overseeing the club’s rise from the anonymity of Slovakia’s second division to EuroLeague champions, winning the multinational title in 1999 and 2000. With the Russian club, however, she faced a different challenge: trying to ensure her uber-talented team didn’t fail.
Spartak was owned by Shabtai Kalmanovich, a businessman, concert promoter and former KGB spy, who had spent more than half a decade in an Israeli jail on an espionage charge. ESPN once compared Kalmanovich to “sort of the Mark Cuban of Russian basketball.” He spared no expense — both on and off the court, including once booking the club for a two-day stay at the Ritz-Carlton Paris ahead of the EuroLeague Final Four, which was being played in Spain — to ensure his club would be the world’s best.
With Spartak, Hejková coached Taurasi, Bird, Jackson, Thompson and Ticha Penicheiro, among other notables. Chatman, who later also became the club’s head coach, said that while there, “I thought I had died and gone to basketball heaven” because of its surplus of talent. Chatman didn’t know Hejková before joining her staff. She had the same agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, as Taurasi and Bird, however. And Hejková believes one of her American players told Kalmanovich about the American coach. “Usually, he told (me) something and I had to accept,” she says.
Hejková says Chatman taught her about the style of basketball in the U.S. Among the hardest aspects Hejková says she faced was telling some of her foreign players they couldn’t always suit up due to international gameplay rules.
Nevertheless, the Slovakian coach says she gave her star-studded roster “freedom, because they are special.” Adding: “I didn’t want to show power that I am (the) coach and you have to be kids, because they were so great.” She says she installed rules on defense but gave them flexibility on offense. In both of Hejková’s seasons with Spartak, they took home EuroLeague titles.
Giving her players agency remained a priority after she joined Praha in 2012. Robinson, who starred on the team’s 2015 EuroLeague title run, recalls Hejková building a foundation, but also telling her, “Go be free.” “I think she kind of just let me be,” she says. While there, the 33-year-old guard adds she was also “probably in the best shape of my life” because of all the running they did. A commitment to pushing the basketball remains today.
In a highly anticipated early December EuroLeague road game against Fenerbahçe — only two points currently separate the two teams at the top of Group A — Hejková rarely became demonstrative even as her team squandered a fourth-quarter lead. In a recent practice, she was slightly more animated, repeating, “Please be more aggressive on the ball” on numerous occasions as the club worked on its 3-2 zone. But she seldom is one to deliver a weighty speech, especially ahead of Czech competition where the club recently won its record 257th consecutive domestic league contest. Instead, she says about hyping up her team, “I don’t need motivation because I have players and they love to win.”
Thomas was the first of Praha’s two current Americans to sign with the club. With her in the lineup, Hejková says peers have told her team is playing faster than ever. Jones arrived a year after her Connecticut teammate. Immediately, Jones says, she was given the green light to shoot 3s, and to maneuver around the floor as she saw fit.
When Jones arrived in Prague in 2019, she says she knew some of Hejková’s reputation, learning what she could from conversations with Thomas. She admits, however, she didn’t know the full extent of her coach’s accolades — among them winning national titles in four different countries. During her first season there, Hejková received an acknowledgement that would surpass any other: She was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
The Slovakian coach says she had “not even a small small thought” she would one day receive such a message. When she was told, over the phone, that she had been inducted, “I stopped to talk. I forget (how) to speak English.”
Months later, at the global basketball federation’s ceremony in Beijing, Hejková, who says Praha will be the last organization for whom she coaches, arrived not thinking she would have to give an acceptance speech. On stage, however, she fittingly tried to remain calm. She strung together just under 90 seconds of thank-yous. She praised the “many perfect people, many perfect managers, many good assistant coaches and great players” across her three-decade career. Her final acknowledgement was a nod toward one of the biggest influences.
“I don’t want to forget my family and my biggest biggest fan: Mom,” she said. Hejková then looked up and blew a kiss to the sky.